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In what would have been a gigantic story in a normal week, Steve Austin’s return to the ring ended up buried in the news cycle.
On the same day WWE started angling for his return, news began to swirl that Cody Rhodes was leaving AEW, almost surely for WWE.
A few years ago, the idea of Austin’s return being overshadowed would have been unthinkable. Rhodes leaving AEW for WWE, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been quite as surprising because this is the wrestling business. But at this point, Rhodes’s departure from AEW, which has become the most successful No. 2 promotion in the U.S in 22 years, caught far more people off guard. And that included almost everyone in AEW.
The biggest mystery hinges on why Rhodes chose to leave AEW. Theories abound to the point that everyone close to the situation has one, and they are all different. The only people who likely know the full story are Cody, his wife Brandi Rhodes and AEW owner Tony Khan. All three have privately and publicly discussed the situation now and have made it clear that the reason will remain confidential.
Austin’s potential return is particularly interesting because he retired in 2003 largely due to neck damage from his years in the ring, most notably from a sit out piledriver in a 1997 match with Owen Hart. He came back to wrestle a few times after the injury and the major neck surgery that followed, but the neck damage led to him calling it quits in early 2003. He did what turned out to be his own secret final match with The Rock at WrestleMania that year in Seattle.
Now 57, Austin had turned down lucrative offers from Japan and teased situations with the likes of CM Punk and Brock Lesnar over the years when he was significantly younger. But those never came close to happening, and Austin seemed pretty content with what he had accomplished in his career. He had talked about not coming back because of how mentally difficult leaving was the first time, and he didn't want to get back in that frame of mind again.
Big money would have been involved in any return, but the amount of money an outside attraction can garner at this stage of the game, between the competition for top talent and WWE's lucrative television and Saudi Arabia deals, is far more than at any period in wrestling history.
In recent years, WWE has been criticized for its inability to create new needle-moving headliners. But what it does have is a long list of stars with great nostalgia value from the past.
Austin is the biggest of such stars who has never come back. The plan is for him to face Kevin Owens. The build began Monday when Owens started insulting the state of Texas and Texans. While a slew of legendary wrestling characters have come from Texas—between The Funks, The Von Erichs, Undertaker, Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody and countless others—none were bigger stars than the man nicknamed the Texas Rattlesnake.
Austin was always going to have some involvement in WrestleMania, which takes place on April 2-3 at AT&T Stadium in Irving, Texas. It's not far from North Texas State, where the former Steve Williams was once a college football player in the mid-80s. During that period, on some Friday nights, he went with some of his buddies to the famed Dallas Sportatorium to see the second generation Von Erich Brothers and Brody. It's also where he first started training, and had his early matches a few years later.
Owens makes for a safe opponent for Austin. He's a great worker who would have the best shot at making sure Austin can have a good performance. And he's paid well—boasting one of the best contracts in the company—with his role to do strong interviews and in the ring, largely to make others look good.
We're probably several weeks away from any such announcement, as the storyline has to develop further, but Austin is hardly the only celebrity type expected on the show.
YouTuber and boxer Logan Paul is slated for a tag team match, pairing up with The Miz against the father-and-son duo of Rey and Dominik Mysterio. Paul had made some prior television appearances with WWE but was miscast as a babyface. The company quickly realized from the fans’ reactions of booing him that he was a heel to the audience, so his casting changed.
Courtesy of WWE
Johnny Knoxville, 50, who appeared in the Royal Rumble and on many WWE television shows this year, is expected to either wrestle or have an involvement with Sami Zayn, the company's Intercontinental champion. Given Knoxville's age, his concussion issues and a brain hemorrhage in the past, it is a risk, but WWE can map out a match for him with minimal risks if necessary.
Celebrities, as well as a potential return of Rhodes, are even more important this year. WrestleMania will be two nights instead of one, and it will be held at a large stadium with no COVID-19 restrictions on attendance.
Both nights had just over 47,000 tickets out last week. But doing a two-for-one discount this past week got each night's number up to around 53,000. It's still a ways to hit 80,709, the real number in attendance at the 2016 show in the same stadium. That year the company made a public announcement of 101,763, and since it has to be promoted as the biggest ever, they need to get enough people in the building where they can again announce a number of over 100,000 for both days. It would be hard to do that but not impossible in a stadium filled with a lot of blocked off seats.
At the Elimination Chamber show on Saturday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it was finalized that the main event, at least originally planned for the Sunday show, would pit the company's two major champions and top stars against each other.
Brock Lesnar, who won the WWE title (the main championship of Monday's Raw division) Saturday will take on Roman Reigns, who has held the Universal title (the top title of the Smackdown division) since the summer of 2020.
Courtesy of WWE
This match has been obvious since the summer. The goal of the WWE has been to make Reigns and Lesnar look dominant for the past several months and come across as the company's two biggest stars above all others. The idea was to build it to a dream match scenario, which is tough since the two have wrestled many times over the years. The change was that in the past, it was Paul Heyman in the corner of Lesnar, and this year, Heyman is in the corner of Reigns.
The original plan was not for both titles to be at stake because the original idea was one major men's title defended on each show. That decision changed going into the Royal Rumble event.
But the company clearly feels that they can headline Saturday night with something other than a men's title. That would likely be the Charlotte Flair vs. Ronda Rousey Smackdown women's title match or possibly the Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair women's title match from the Raw brand. It would also make sense to put the Austin return and what they perceive as the strongest women's match together on Saturday.
One would have expected a ton of major teases at the Chamber show to where much of the lineup for WrestleMania would have been obvious.
That really wasn't the case.
With the exception of Drew McIntyre against either Happy Corbin, or perhaps a handicap match against Corbin and Madcap Moss and some sort of a climax of the Smackdown TV feud with Sonya Deville vs. Naomi, there were no clear directions coming out of the show.
